‘I’m afraid not,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m afraid you’re thinking along the same lines as myself. We’ve no guard rails aft. A careless step ’ I broke off as the steward re-entered and reported that no one had seen a sign of Hunslett, then went on: ‘I think I should report this to Sergeant MacDonald at once.’
Everybody else seemed to think so, too, so we left. The cold slanting rain was heavier than ever. At the head of the gangway I pretended to slip, flung my arms about wildly for a bit then toppled into the sea, taking the gangway wandering lead with me. What with the rain, the wind and the sudden darkness there was quite a bit of confusion and it was the better part of a minute before I was finally hauled on to the landing stage of the companionway. Old Skouras was commiseration itself and offered me a change of clothes at once but I declined politely and went back to the Firecrest with Uncle Arthur. Neither of us spoke on the way back.
As we secured the dinghy I said: ‘When you were at dinner on the Shangri-la you must have given some story to account for your presence here, for your dramatic appearance in an R.A.F. rescue launch.’
‘Yes. It was a good one. I told them a vital unesco conference in Geneva was being deadlocked because of the absence of a certain Dr Spenser Freeman. It happens to be true. In all the papers to-day. Dr Freeman is not there because it suits us not to have him there. No one knows that, of course. I told them that it was of vital national importance that he should be there, that we’d received information that he was doing field research in Torbay and that the Government had sent me here to get him back.’
‘Why send the launch away? That would seem odd.’
‘No. If he’s somewhere in the wilds of Torbay I couldn’t locate him before daylight. There’s a helicopter, I said, standing by to fly him out. I’ve only to lift the phone to have it here in fifty minutes.’
‘And of course, you weren’t to know that the telephone lines were out of order. It might have worked if you hadn’t called at the Firecrest in the rescue launch before you went to the Shangri-la. You weren’t to know that our friends who were locked in the after cabin when you went aboard would report back that they’d heard an R.A.F. rescue launch here at such and such a time. They might have seen it through a porthole, but even that wouldn’t be necessary, the engines are unmistakable. So now our friends know you’re lying like a trooper. The chances are that they’ve now a very shrewd idea as to who exactly you are. Congratulations, sir. You’ve now joined the category I’ve been in for years – no insurance company in the world would issue you a life policy even on a ninety-nine per cent premium.’
‘Our trip to the Shangri-la has removed your last doubts about our friends out there?’
‘Yes, sir. You saw the reaction of our belted broker. Lord Charnley. And him an aristocrat to boot!’
‘A small thing to base a big decision on, Calvert,’ Uncle Arthur said coldly.
‘Yes, sir.’ I fished my scuba suit from the after locker and led the way below. ‘I didn’t fall into the water by accident. By accident on purpose. I didn’t mention that when I was hanging on to the boat’s rudder off the reef this evening I cut a notch in it. A deep vee notch. The Shangri-la’s tender has a deep vee notch in it. Same notch, in fact. Same boat.’
‘I see. I see indeed.’ Uncle Arthur sat on the settee and gave me the combination of the cold blue eye and the monocle. ‘You forgot to give me advance notification of your intentions.’
‘I didn’t forget.’ I started to change out of my soaking clothes. ‘I’d no means of knowing how good an actor you are, sir.’
‘I’ll accept that. So that removed your last doubts.’
‘No, sir. Superfluous confirmation, really. I knew before then. Remember that swarthy character sitting beside Lavorski who asked me if Hunslett could swim. I’ll bet a fortune to a penny that he wasn’t at the Shangri-la’s dinner table earlier on.’
‘You would win. How do you know?’
‘Because he was in command of the crew of the boat who shot down the helicopter and killed Williams and hung around afterwards waiting to have a go at me. His name is Captain Imrie. He was the captain of the prize crew of the Nantesville.’
Uncle Arthur nodded, but his mind was on something else. It was on the scuba suit I was pulling on.
‘What the hell do you think you’re going to do with that thing?’ he demanded.
‘Advance notification of intentions, sir. Won’t be long. I’m taking a little trip to the Shangri-la. The Shangri-la’s tender, rather. With a little homing device and a bag of sugar. With your permission, sir.’
‘Something else you forgot to tell me, hey, Calvert? Like that breaking off the Shangri-la’s gangway light was no accident?’
‘I’d like to get there before they replace it, sir.’
‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.’ Uncle Arthur shook his head. For a moment I thought he was referring to the dispatch with which I had made the uneventful return trip to the Shangri-la’s tender, but his next words showed that his mind was on higher and more important things. ‘That Tony Skouras should be up to his neck in this. There’s something far wrong. I just can’t believe it. Good God, do you know he was up for a peerage in the next List?’
‘So soon? He told me he was waiting for the price to come down.’
Uncle Arthur said nothing. Normally, he would have regarded such a statement as a mortal insult, as he himself automatically collected a life peerage on retirement. But nothing. He was as shaken as that.
‘I’d like nothing better than to arrest the lot of them,’ I said. ‘But our hands are tied. We’re helpless. But now that I know what we do know I wonder if you would do me a favour before we go ashore, sir. There are two things I want to know. One is whether Sir Anthony really was down at some Clyde shipyard a few days ago having stabilisers fitted – a big job few yards would tackle in a yacht that size. Should find out in a couple of hours. People tell silly and unnecessary lies. Also I’d like to find out if Lord Kirkside has taken the necessary steps to have his dead son’s title – he was Viscount somebody or other – transferred to his younger son.’
‘You get the set ready and I’ll ask them anything you like,’ Uncle Arthur said wearily. He wasn’t really listening to me, he was still contemplating with stunned disbelief the possibility that his future fellow peer was up to the neck in skullduggery on a vast scale. ‘And pass me that bottle before you go below.’
At the rate Uncle Arthur was going, I reflected, it was providential that the home of one of the most famous distilleries in the Highlands was less than half a mile from where we were anchored. I lowered the false head of the starboard diesel to the engineroom deck as if it weighed a ton. I straightened and stood there for a full minute, without moving. Then I went to the engine-room door.
‘Sir Arthur?’
‘Coming, coming.’ A few seconds and he was at the doorway, the glass of whisky in his hand.
‘All connected up?’
‘I’ve found Hunslett, sir.’
Uncle Arthur moved slowly forward like a man in a dream.
The transmitter was gone. All our explosives and listening devices and little portable transmitters were gone. That had left plenty of room. They’d had to double him up to get him in, his head was resting on his forearms and his arms on his knees, but there was plenty of room. I couldn’t see his face. I could see no marks of violence. Half-sitting, half-lying there he seemed curiously peaceful, a man drowsing away a summer afternoon by a sun-warmed wall. A long summer afternoon because for ever was a long time. That’s what I’d told him last night, he’d all the time in the world for sleep.
I touched his face. It wasn’t cold yet. He’d been dead two to three hours, no more. I turned his face to see if I could find how he had died. His head lolled to one side like that of a broken rag doll. I turned and looked at Sir Arthur. The dreamlike expression had gone, his eyes were cold and bitter and cruel. I thought vaguely of the tales I’d heard, and largely discounted, o
f Uncle Arthur’s total ruthlessness. I wasn’t so ready to discount them now. Uncle Arthur wasn’t where he was now because he’d answered an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, he’d have been hand-picked by two or three very clever men who would have scoured the country to find the one man with the extraordinary qualifications they required. And they had picked Uncle Arthur, the man with the extraordinary qualifications, and total ruthlessness must have been one of the prime requisites. I’d never really thought of it before.
He said: ‘Murdered, of course.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How?’
‘His neck is broken, sir.’
‘His neck? A powerful man like Hunslett?’
‘I know a man who could do it with one twist of his hands. Quinn. The man who killed Baker and Delmont. The man who almost killed me.’
‘I see.’ He paused, then went on, almost absently: ‘You will, of course, seek out and destroy this man. By whatever means you choose. You can reconstruct this, Calvert?’
‘Yes, sir.’ When it came to reconstruction when it was too damn’ late, I stood alone. ‘Our friend or friends boarded the Firecrest very shortly after I had left this morning. That is, before daylight. They wouldn’t have dared try it after it was light. They overpowered Hunslett and kept him prisoner. Confirmation that he was held prisoner all day comes from the fart that he failed to meet the noonday schedule. They still held him prisoner when you came aboard. There was no reason why you should suspect that there was anyone aboard – the boat that put them aboard before dawn would have gone away at once. They couldn’t leave one of the Shangri-la’s boats lying alongside the Firecrest all day.’
‘There’s no necessity to dot i’s and cross t’s.’
‘No, sir. Maybe an hour or so after you departed the Shangri-la’s tender with Captain Imrie, Quinn and company aboard turns up: they report that I’m dead. That was Hunslett’s death warrant. With me dead they couldn’t let him live. So Quinn killed him. Why he was killed this way I don’t know. They may have thought shots could be heard, they may not have wanted to use knives or blunt instruments in case they left blood all over the deck. They were intending to abandon the boat till they came back at night, at midnight, to take it out to the Sound and scuttle it and someone might have come aboard in the interim. My own belief is that he was killed this way because Quinn is a psychopath and compulsive killer and liked doing it this way.’
‘I see. And then they said to themselves: “Where can we hide Hunslett till we come back at midnight? Just in case someone does come aboard.” And then they said: “Ha! We know. We’ll hide him in the dummy diesel.” So they threw away the transmitter and all the rest of the stuff – or took it with them. It doesn’t matter. And they put Hunslett inside.’ Uncle Arthur had been speaking very quietly throughout and then suddenly, for the first time I’d ever known it, his voice became a shout. ‘How in the name of God did they know this was a dummy diesel, Calvert? How could they have known?’ His voice dropped to what was a comparative whisper. ‘Someone talked, Calvert. Or someone was criminally careless.’
‘No one talked, sir. Someone was criminally careless. I was. If I’d used my eyes Hunslett wouldn’t be lying there now. The night the two bogus customs officers were aboard I knew that they had got on to something when we were in the engine-room here. Up to the time that they’d inspected the batteries they’d gone through the place with a tooth-comb. After that they didn’t give a damn. Hunslett even suggested that it was something to do with the batteries but I was too clever to believe him.’ I walked to the work-bench, picked up a torch and handed it to Uncle Arthur. ‘Do you see anything about those batteries that would excite suspicion?’
He looked at me, that monocled eye still ice-cold and bitter, took the torch and examined the batteries carefully. He spent all of two minutes searching, then straightened.
‘I see nothing,’ he said curtly.
‘Thomas – the customs man who called himself Thomas – did. He was on to us from the start. He knew what he was looking for. He was looking for a powerful radio transmitter. Not the tuppence ha’penny job we have up in the wheelhouse. He was looking for signs of a power take-off from those batteries. He was looking for the marks left by screw clamps or by a pair of saw-toothed, powerfully spring-loaded crocodile clips.’
Uncle Arthur swore, very quietly, and bent over the batteries again. This time his examination took only ten seconds.
‘You make your point well, Calvert.’ The eyes were still bitter, but no longer glacial.
‘No wonder they knew exactly what I was doing to-day,’ I said savagely. ‘No wonder they knew that Hunslett would be alone before dawn, that I’d be landing at that cove this evening. All they required was radio confirmation from someone out in Loch Houron that Calvert had been snooping around there and the destruction of the helicopter was a foregone conclusion. All this damned fol-de-rol about smashing up radio transmitters and making us think that we were the only craft left with a transmitter. God, how blind can you be?’
‘I assume that there’s some logical thought behind this outburst,’ Uncle Arthur said coldly.
‘That night Hunslett and I were aboard the Shangri-la for drinks. I told you that when we returned we knew that we’d had visitors. We didn’t know why, then. My God!’
‘You’ve already been at pains to demonstrate the fact that I was no brighter than yourself about the battery. It’s not necessary to repeat the process –’
‘Let me finish,’ I interrupted. Uncle Arthur didn’t like being interrupted. ‘They came down to the engine-room here. They knew there was a transmitter. They looked at that starboard cylinder head. Four bolts – the rest are dummies – with the paint well and truly scraped off. The port cylinder head bolts without a flake of paint missing. They take off this head, wire into the transceiver lines on the output side of the scrambler and lead out to a small radio transmitter hidden, like as not, behind the battery bank there. They’d have all the equipment with them for they knew exactly what they wanted to do. From then on they could listen in to our every word. They knew all our plans, everything we intended to do, and made their own plans accordingly. They figured – and how right they were – that it would be a damn’ sight more advantageous for them to let Hunslett and I have our direct communication with you and so know exactly what was going on than to wreck this set and force us to find some other means of communication that they couldn’t check on.’
‘But why – but why destroy the advantage they held by – by -’ He gestured at the empty engine casing.
‘It wasn’t an advantage any longer,’ I said tiredly. ‘When they ripped out that set Hunslett was dead and they thought Calvert was dead. They didn’t need the advantage any more.’
‘Of course, of course. My God, what a fiendish brew this is.’ He took out his monocle and rubbed his eye with the knuckle of his hand. ‘They’re bound to know that we will find Hunslett the first time we attempt to use this radio. I am beginning to appreciate the weight of your remark in the saloon that we might find it difficult to insure ourselves. They cannot know how much we know, but they cannot afford to take chances. Not with, what is it now, a total of seventeen million pounds at stake. They will have to silence us.’
‘Up and off is the only answer,’ I agreed. ‘We’ve been down here too long already, they might even be on their way across now. Don’t let that Luger ever leave your hand, sir. We’ll be safe enough under way. But first we must put Hunslett and our friend in the after cabin ashore.’
‘Yes. Yes, we must put them ashore first.’
At the best of times, weighing anchor by electric windlass is not a job for a moron, even an alert moron. Even our small windlass had a pull of over 1,400 pounds. A carelessly placed hand or foot, a flapping trouser leg or the trailing skirts of an oilskin, any of those being caught up between chain and drum and you can be minus a hand or foot before you can cry out, far less reach the deck switch which is invariably placed abaft th
e windlass. Doing this on a wet slippery deck is twice as dangerous. Doing it on a wet slippery deck, in total darkness, heavy rain and with a very unstable boat beneath your feet, not to mention having the brake pawl off and the winch covered by a tarpaulin, is a highly dangerous practice indeed. But it wasn’t as dangerous as attracting the attention of our friends on the Shangri-la.
Perhaps it was because of my total absorption in the job on hand, perhaps because of the muffled clank of the anchor coming inboard, that I didn’t locate and identify the sound as quickly as I might. Twice I’d thought I’d heard the far-off sound of a woman’s voice, twice I’d vaguely put it down to late-night revelry on one of the smaller yachts in the bay – it would require an I.B.M. computer to work out the gallonage of gin consumed in British yacht harbours after the sun goes down. Then I heard the voice again, much nearer this time, and I put all thought of revelry afloat out of my mind. The only cry of desperation ever heard at a yacht party is when the gin runs out: this soft cry had a different quality of desperation altogether. I stamped on the deck switch, and all sound on the fo’c’sle ceased. The Lilliput was in my hand without my knowing how it had got there.
‘Help me!’ The voice was low and urgent and desperate. ‘For God’s sake, help me.’
The voice came from the water, amidships on the port side. I moved back silently to where I thought the voice had come from and stood motionless. I thought of Hunslett and I didn’t move a muscle. I’d no intention of helping anyone until I’d made sure the voice didn’t come from some dinghy – a dinghy with two other passengers, both carrying machineguns. One word, one incautious flash of light, a seven pound pull on a trigger and Calvert would be among his ancestors if, that was, they would have anything to do with such a bloody fool of a descendant.
‘Please! Please help me! Please!’
When Eight Bells Toll Page 15